Received the official acceptance letter, via postal mail printed 4/2, from Alpert Medical School as part of Brown PLME. Looking forward to “A day on College Hill” visit. :bz
Hey @HS2DirectMed, congrats on getting into Wash U’s University Scholars Program in Medicine program. Do you have any other Bachelor/MD options you’re looking at, which give a stronger guarantee, or are you pretty set on going to Wash U?
just wanted to say hi in this thread! i’m a junior who is going to be doing my SATs and then applying into the Northwestern HPME program this fall! 
@hpmebound :-h Welcome and good luck! I hope this thread helps you as much as it helped me.
Why You Can’t Trust Colleges When They Discuss Medical School Placement
Conventional Pre-Med track:
“What happens if you happen to have a good UG GPA, say 3.7, and an MCAT score in the 80th percentile? At this college you might not get a letter of recommendation and without that letter you will have virtually no chance of admissions to medical school.”
This article is a bit bland and is not clear. The letter they are talking about is a committee letter which is a collection of several letters written by individual recommenders. Not all schools use a committee letter and there are a few who will tell you that you don’t have the preparation to apply and they recommend against it.
There are many undergrad colleges out there which don’t use a committee letter. It is important for someone wanting to be a premed to be aware how the college works before selecting one out of their choices.
Post from @iwannabe_Brown on the subject matter:
"8) Beware a college’s published medical school admissions rate. There are so many ways to fudge it that the number can quickly become meaningless. Here are some examples
School A publishes a 95% acceptance rate 100 students desire medical school, 50 are denied a committee letter, 49/50 (95%) get in, but the true admissions rate is actually 49/100 or 49%.
School B publishes a 95% acceptance rate 100 students desire a medical career, only 10 of them are headed to US MD schools. 40 are going to DOs, 25 to foreign MDs, 10 to PA school, 10 to NP school. 95% are headed to “medical school” but only 10% are going to the school you think it is.
School C publishes that 95% of their pre-med students are attending one of their top 3 choices. 95% of students really did get in, but the top 3 thing is based on a questionnaire at the end of the year that asks “of the medical schools that you were ADMITTED to, are you going to one of your top 3 choices.” If you were to have asked at the beginning of the cycle “of the schools that you are APPLYING to, which are your top 3” and then used those answers to calculate the percentage, it would actually be that only 40% are going to one of their top 3 choices.
School D states that 95% of their pre-med students were accepted to medical school. Of the 100 pre-meds, 50 of them are in a combined BS/MD program. Of the 50 who actually applied to medical school, 20 are going to US MD, 15 are going DO and 10 are going foreign MD. The true acceptance rate for people applying to US MD schools is really 20/50 or 40%."
I am currently trying to decide between St. Bonaventure/George Washington, Union/Albany, and REMS. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Created a thread for admitted students to Albany linked programs.
@wtchmeBSwtchmeMD REMS is a tier 1 program. You will get good guidance and research opportunities from REMS and you will also have a well rounded undergrad from Rochester. It is better than RPI and St. Bonaventure.
@wtchmeBSwtchmeMD
IMO, from your three choices…
REMS!!! It’s a great program and balanced requirements to retain seat. Good ranking in research and service focused program. Congrats!
Kindly share your thoughts on UT-Health in Houston?
@wtchmeBSwtchmeMD, arguably, REMS for sure in consideration of both Medical School and UG.
@IfnousWHO, @texaspg is very much correct. Most universities don’t have “committees” that filter their premed applicants and write a letter (or don’t, effectively destroying that person’s application, since all others coming from that school will have the letter). I see this more at small colleges/universities. I agree it’s your job to find out what the process is at that school before selection.
@houstontxdad - Is this UH to UTH/UTMB?
Is it safe to assume that most State Universities do not have “committee letter” while most prestigious colleges, like JHU, Duke, WashU, UChicago, NW, Ivies, Williams, Swarthmore, etc require the letter ?
JHU definitely does. I am aware of Columbia, Princeton and UPenn doing committee letters. There is a process where you can exclude yourself from the committee letter but from what I understand, if you do that at a school like JHU, the top colleges wonder about your candidacy.
Stanford does not do them.
@texaspg Thanks for the clarification!
I think Yale does as well (committee letter).
Need help in deciding between Villanova/Drexel and TCNJ/NJMS programs. Any suggestions or input would be extremely helpful